So the winter was fast approaching and although I work from home, I needed a place for our pup to hideout in case the weather got bad quicker than I was able to get out and being him in.
I do customer service from home so if I'm in the middle of an hour long phone call, I have to finish it before I can rescue him.
I had no idea how to make a doghouse aside from knowing it needed a floor, roof and walls. I wanted it to be insulated as well, since it gets pretty cold here in southern Ontario.
To get started I did some research. And by research I mean I searched doghouse tutorials on pinterest. I found a few that were pretty close to what I was looking for, especially this one here from ronhazelton. The best part was, there was a video on top of the blog post and pictures.
I drew up a plan, measured my dog and sorted out what sizes all the parts needed to be. I headed to home depot and bombarded the helpful staff member in the cutting department with my requests. Four pieces of plywood cut into over 12 different pieces, I managed to cram those along with 8 2x4s, two packs of insulation, a package of shingles, a box of shingle nails and some deck screws into my Mazda CX9.
When I got home I realized I had made some mistakes with measurements. I didn't include the height of the base in the height I had cut for my outer walls AND I didn't include the depth of the walls when I sorted out how big the entire doghouse should be.
I had to improvise on the fly, but I'm used to that. I decided to not attach the outer walls to the outside of the base but to use 1x2s I had on hand and screw those around the edges of the base leaving just enough room for attaching the outer walls beside that on top of base.
Once the outer walls were up, I determined that it was easier to add the inner walls before the insulation, since it was just the right size to slide in between. From there, the rest was history!
I applied some leftover red stain I had from my playset refinishing project, added the roof (on hinges to make it easier to clean) and then nailed in the shingles.
Looks pretty great if I do say so myself. Now, if only I could convince my dog to get out of the snow long enough to justify all the work I put into it! Dogs are silly little furry creatures aren't they?
If I can do it, you can too! Dont be afraid to take on the challenge and try something new :)
Stay crafty my friends!
Adelle